Is OKEx, The Chinese Bitcoin Exchange Hacked?

OKEx denies getting hacked as customer Loose $3 Million

OKEx, the Bitcoin exchange in China is trying to save its face by denying reports of getting hacked and is rather blaming the customers that it was user’s carelessness of not securing their accounts properly and in turn loosing their money.

Rumours regarding online hackers breaching the OKEx’s exchange has been floating since August as many users started reporting that their funds had disappeared from their accounts. The victims have supposedly loss a total of USD 3 million in valuations. Users have reported that just before the theft, they have seen German IPs logging into their accounts. One user is said to have 200 Bitcoins.

OKEx Deny Charges of a General Hack. Says ‘only a few users affected’

Though the majority victims were OKEx customers, few from OKCoin has also reported similar thefts. Both – the OkCoin and OKEx are sister concerns of the same Chinese firms.

Director of Financial Market at OKEx and OKCoin, Lennix Lai said:

“OKEx was NOT hacked. All client assets are safe and sound.”

The exchanges say that it is possible that hackers might have exploited the vulnerabilities of those customer accounts that were poor secured and the owners of those accounts who fell for such malicious phishing attempts.

A Chinese news agency, JRJ who was first in reporting these incidents said that since China has issued a ban on Bitcoin trading in the country, the victims are really in a fix under such circumstances as they can no more seek help from regulatory bodies for any kind of settlement.

However, OKEx has asked its customers to enable two-factor-authentication or 2fa for their accounts.

OKCoin is currently the 16th largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world by volumes and OKEx is at the 46th position. If we consider the Bitcoin transactions alone, OKCoin ranks sixth in the world.